we begin tonight with donald trump's
kids speaking out amid this ongoing
criminal probe
after their company where they work the
trump organization and its long time cfo
have been indicted it was 15 counts the
charges as we've been running through
in our coverage starting yesterday
afternoon include tax fraud larceny
conspiracy obstruction
and growing pressure and heat on alan
weisselberg the money man
to talk to flip now there are many ways
to count this up and there are debates
over how
typical this kind of set of charges
is but as a practical legal matter he
could face over a
decade potentially a decade in prison if
convicted
those are numbers that would get
anyone's attention whether you think
it's an unusual theory of the case to go
after these
benefits or not trump's children are
speaking out for the very first time
about the indictment
donald trump jr who is executive vice
president posted a 13-minute video on
facebook
discussing how the intent he says
is to try to defend the company where he
works in his family business and he has
every right to speak out
although some of what he said may have
made matters worse
my father after almost 50 years
of employment paid for his grandkids
private school in new york city my dad
did that because he's a good guy
takes care of his employees
my dad did that because he's a good guy
well
that may not be helpful he's linking his
father and he's providing a kind of a
public testimony we don't have any
reason to believe he's faced the grand
jury at don jr
and admitting that it was trump indeed
who personally paid for weisselberg's
kids now for his school i should say now
i just want to be clear with you as a
logical matter
there's no defense to tax evasion that
you did it to help someone
by definition if you evade taxes there's
extra money
and if you give that money to someone
else or even give it to charity for
example which no one's claiming trump
did
that doesn't get you out of the
underlying charge if the facts show and
a jury thinks that you duck taxes
this is about off the books tax crime
allegations
and as referenced in the indictment don
jr may have just decided to admit what's
already
on paper or on the books which is donald
trump's signature
on those very checks that were used as
criminal evidence in the indictment
another executive at the company and
another family member eric trump
speaking out
to defend the family are you concerned
that they may send in today
indictment your way your brother's way
or your sister's way
you know what i'm not eric because guess
what you know we've always lived
amazingly clean lives and believe me if
they could have they already would have
right i mean that's what they wanted
that was their end goal
amazingly clean lives you can think of
this as
the outcast defense so fresh and so
clean
but again adjectives claims opinions
about how they live or what the goals
were
that's not going to cut it in court if
you watch this show the beat you know
that we cover these cases fairly and
accurately i've said before and will say
throughout covering this trial that
there may be
exculpatory evidence for mr weisselberg
he may beat the case but he won't beat
it by saying that he's
so fresh and so clean as for what else
is going on in the case we know the new
york attorney general reinforced that
it's a quote ongoing
case we don't know the entire impact on
trump org of the
pending indictment they will get their
day in court big loans
do sometimes come with clauses that
state a lender can demand
immediate repayment if a borrower is
indicted
we don't have any report tonight that
suggests those kind of repercussions
have hit this company yet
let's get right into it with our experts
former rnc chair michael steele
and former sdny prosecutor donya perry
good evening to both of you hey ari
are you feeling clean michael are you
feeling fresh and clean
i feel fresh baby i feel fresh
it's the best defense i got to offers
i'm fresh
fresh i mean look michael this is what
i'll ask you
on the on the i'm having a little fun
with it obviously i've covered the
serious part seriously but
in politics and in rhetoric you could
say whatever you want you can run your
bio campaign ads about whatever you want
and your
supporters will probably give you the
benefit of the doubt on certain things
um is it is it going to work the same
way in court though to say this was all
about donald trump's
uh charity and his his being nice to
employees and that's all it was about
no no the law doesn't give a damn about
your charitable inclinations
what it cares about particularly in the
tax space
as the as the good counsel who's with us
knows
is whether or not you're in violation of
the law so i mean as you
rightly laid out i may have the best
intent in the world
here's a hundred thousand dollars to
educate your child
guess what the irs says that's awfully
nice of you
but ma'am that is income to you
and sir you have to account for that on
your books
for the company and so if you don't do
either of those two things
guess what you're in violation so you
can be
amazingly clean in your mind
but your hands and your actions are
still dirty
and that's the problem and here's the
second problem
the boys need to shut the hell up
because all they're doing is offering
prosecutors
evidence that they're going to replay at
the trial
so it's just it's just it's amazing to
me
that they still believe in this trump
magical kingdom
that if we say it it is so and if we say
it enough
then enough people are going to believe
it to make it so
but that's not how the irs and the
government looks at these things when
they come at you
and so i i just find it all rather
amusing that you know
amazingly clean will be the order of the
day until the irs tells you
guess what you're going to jail
yeah that all makes sense and is laid
out and dania i want to play a little
bit more of eric trump who who michael
pointed out might want to talk
less uh to quote hamilton here he was
they have an entire district attorney
office
and attorney general's office that's
focused on three and a half million
dollars to take down a political
opponent
i mean this is what they do this is new
york state for you
this is worse than a banana republic
it's it's truly horrible
donya let's take that seriously let's
explore
if someone does the thought experiment
in
a local red district or state
against a prominent democrat on a case
that was initially described as
potentially big
and involving said democrat but ends up
hitting the people around them
and is numerically smaller i've covered
why the charges are real
and i don't think 1.7 mil in tax evasion
is something most
americans just think is a rounding error
having said that this is a different
point
a different allegation about a political
d.a office
your view in response to that
yeah i mean first of all i just want to
go back and agree with michael uh
people should be talking less right now
they are potentially
much like weisselberg ministerial you
know agents of the company and this is
the criminal case and those statements
could be attributed
to them so they should be watching what
they're saying they also
don't appear to be legal experts or tax
experts and
um their their comments are are
inaccurate on many levels i don't think
they will have jury appeal and they
certainly
don't have uh any legal uh value
the da's office um has been looking at
this for years as we know
they just brought the first case we
don't know if this is the last case
it is not a penumenty case these are
serious
i mean every felony uh charge is a
serious one
but this one charges a pervasive
years-long
fraud scheme on behalf of an
organization
that appears to be you know a a modus
operandi for
for the company and right now
the low-hanging fruit at least um have
been charged we've got weisselberg
and clearly there are going to be other
so i don't think it's time for the trump
funds to be taking
you know any sort of victory lap that
trump has not been charged or anyone
else
and nor should they be saying if they
could have charged them they would have
charged them
as one of them just did because this is
the first round and it's not
the last and this happens all the time a
lot of talk about this
well this is all they charge a it's not
a small offense
and b it's just the first events and so
um i think they should be silently
watching and waiting
and lawyering
fair points and then michael we didn't
have a
like an open surveillance camera on
donald trump when the news broke
um but we had kind of by happenstance an
audio readout a kind of a
live blogging to use a technology he's
familiar with because he dabbled in it
as you know
uh he is an ex-blogger now uh and that's
okay that's okay
uh but but it was kind of an audio live
blog
with an abc news reporter uh who
happened to be on the phone with him
conducting a different interview and so
we have kind of an interesting
readout of that take a listen
i just spoke to former president trump
who's reacting to this in real time
he called the charges a disgrace that
it's a continuation
of the witch hunt that's been going on
for some time repeatedly said it's a
shame he actually
paused for a moment while we were on the
phone terry looked up at cable news
coverage then said to me john i i can't
believe it's a disgrace
a disgrace he's a tremendous person and
then he went on to say about weisselberg
this is former president trump terry
he says they are pressuring him setting
him up they want him to lie
against trump i then asked the former
president does he think that's going to
happen and terry his response was
no
a fact check and then a question uh the
prosecutors are not demanding he lie
indeed prosecutors could be disbarred or
worse for that what they're asking
wesselberg
to do is go under oath and tell the
truth and if that cooperation or truth
by the way
does not result in other charges that's
okay
they have the evidence they just want to
get his his cooperation which he's
resisting
which is why they've been references to
gangs and mobs
and other places because most americans
when called upon in this situation even
if they get a lawyer and double check
they're willing to provide accurate
testimony about it
who's at work or wherever so fact check
there then your response to just the
overall reaction there
what we're going to get from this person
who may or may not run for office again
so the the the first part of what trump
said is the typical trump drivel
about witch hunts and outraged uh
indignation et cetera et cetera
so we dismissed that at least i
dismissed that
what i pay attention to was the last
thing he said when asked
will weisselberg um basically flip on
him and his response was no and i think
everybody needs to take that
with a pound of understanding because
weisselberg knows how his bread has been
buttered for 50 years
this man has put his kids through school
paid him exceedingly well he has done
things for trump and trump has done
things for him
there's a different symbiosis with this
relationship
than the one we saw with michael cohen
and some others
this is this this goes to the money this
is the guy
who was in the room when the when the
money decisions are being made
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